Christmas Party, The

BASED ON THE MISGUIDED THEORY that, if you were alone on Christmas Day, listening to a tape of Mike Read giving DLT a box of pipecleaners would somehow make you feel better; however, seething inter-DJ loathing was never far from the surface, and ultimately the only saving grace of the whole debacle. Also notable for dominance by the ‘Welly Boot’ mafia, with the more specialist presenters – normally contractually forced to attend – paid the merest of lip service; John Peel recalled being asked “you’ve got a family – how will you be spending Christmas?” every single year. Eventually began to buckle under the changing nature of the network, leading to an inexplicable last-ditch bid was made to save it by having the meal ‘at’ Grey Gables, during the darkest hours of The Archers when they’d do anything to get a few column inches, so not only did everyone have to pretend to like Simon Bates, but also pretend they were in a restaurant run by Jack Woolley. Who isn’t real. The other side of this link up saw John Peel – supposedly at school with Robin Snell – visiting the village (strangely, the rest of the DJs never made it down to The Bull) and sounding like a particualy poor impression of himself. Before you could say ‘Quack Quack Oops’, we had the likes of Take That presenting the pre-recorded festivities instead.

At the height of the ‘Bonkerstastic!’ years, the Big Name Radio 1 DJs (DLT, Noel Edmonds etc) used to give away welly boot-shaped Radio 1 stickers as prizes. The likes of John Peel and Tommy Vance didn’t, and used ‘Welly Boot’ as a pejorative term for the others, who by and large they didn’t get on with.

Was it true that Fear and Loathing in Broadcasting House had reached such a peak in the eighties that Simon Bates was so despised by the other DJs that John Peel and some others planned to attack him in the car park? It is true Peel and Bates despised each other and Peel was no lover of the daytime programmes and DJs, but if this is true, this would confirm that Bates had only one supporter at Radio 1: himself.